TESSA’S FIRST INDYISH BLOG POST-online dating, whole foods, and technology theory

Hey there,

So I’ve been thinking a lot about this network stuff lately. And I thought it would make a nice first blog entry to bring some new connections to the concepts of open sourcing and online networking. connections to connections? indeed.

To start, I must confess I’ve been courting a young gentleman via cyberspace for almost 6 months now. It started as a myspace friend request which then grew into some sporatic messaging and later developed into the daily MSN conversations we now have.

And it works. We have the witty banter, the late night confessions, the how-was-your-day small-talk, and even the inside jokes that grow from habitual chatting.

An unexpected trip to Toronto (where said gentleman resides) found us wondering where we should meet up. And to be brutally honest, it was akward. It immediately hit both of us that we had never experienced the organic space around the words we were typing. “Conversation” takes place in a space that’s formed at the moment when personalities interact and conversation affects its space. While I was lying in bed drinking coffee, typing a response to his message, neither our surroundings, nor our physical conditions were being conveyed except through our choice of words (and emoticons, hehe).

This got me thinking about some food theory I had been reading last year. Annemarie Colbin, author of “The Book of Whole Meals” (a cookbook with some theory at the begininning) and “Food and Healing” (just theory) wrote in the 80s, drawing on Macrobiotic and Asian notions of balance in creating her WHOLE FOODS framework. And I love it.

Basically, she writes that “food” is not some inanimate object separate from the rest of existence. While alive, food (animal or vegetable) lives as we do, interacting with and depending on environmental conditions. Without getting too pachoulli-scented, everything living is a system and has a “life-force”. When we die, our component parts break down and cause our life force to cease as well (or be used for something else, depending on your religious inclination).

Her point being, when we consume food, we assimilate it into our system. It becomes a part of us. Eating is a prime example of one system meeting another and creating something new from the connection. A carrot enters our body, is broken down, and is then used to build new Tessa cells, for example. These cells are not completely Tessa and are no longer carrot, so what are they?

Well, it’s not only the vitamins or nutrients (or whatever else kellogg’s would like us to think of our food in terms of) that become a part of the system. It’s been shown that taking vitamins is not as beneficial as getting the same nutrients from real food. We need the balance of all nutrients that exists in living creatures. But even in the correct ratio, nutrients are just parts. Connecting all the parts that make up a dog’s system would not make a dog.

If you think about it, we can probably all agree that we’re each more than just the specific combination of bones, muscles and flesh that make up our body and mind system.

So, life cannot be manufactured by mixing the right ingredients. The new Tessa cells which prolong my life are something formed by an interaction between myself and the “outside” world. Digestion took life and made more life.

Thinking about this stuff in terms of biology or other sciences that I know close to nothing about, it’s like cells, or any other measurable part of a larger system. We can break down everything that we consider to be a single unit into smaller pieces and experiment with these. But in order to put them together, it’s not just a matter of the sum of all parts.

So….to connect this to Risa’s thoughts on how computers will never replace real world human interaction….Technology can allow for new, more efficient, and easier networking. But all the parts of this communication (instant messaging for speech, photo programs for visuals, voice recording for sound, etc. etc. etc.) still leave out the organic product of human communication. The connection is what matters, and it’s incredible that we have new technology being developed all the time to help make connections possible. But to have any real world use, the emphasis must lie in what is created by the connection, what is unique to an interaction, and this differs from the particular combination of elements itself.

Like my relationship with my gentleman on the net, all the right pieces don’t make a whole. It’s the interaction that creates the chemistry, the life-force, the connection.

But he’ll be in town next week for a visit, so I’ll keep you posted on how that goes…

p.s. Also, in an upcoming blog post, I plan to address my own question of whether, in fact, computers create a new form of life-force in our interaction with them. expect lots of cyborg theory. this could get weird.